


An Obvious Answer

by foolscapper



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Concussions, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Series Dean Winchester, Pre-Series Sam Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Weechesters, as always, based off a tumblr ask prompt, im predictable in my writings, warning for a child being harmed terribly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27695873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolscapper/pseuds/foolscapper
Summary: There was a small struggle at the front door to unlock it, and Dean listened with a quirked eyebrow."You forget how human hands work, Stuart Little?"The door creaked open a fraction in response, and then stayed that way for a moment.Through the sliver of open air, Dean heard a small sob that made his stomach fall through the couch.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 9
Kudos: 161





	An Obvious Answer

  
Sylvester Sharpe turned from the beat up Ford truck he'd parked on the corner of A Street and Cotton Circle after a voice coolly demanded his attention. The boy that met his critical stare was about half his age — youthful, maybe somewhere between sixteen or eighteen: dirty-blonde hair; strange old necklace; a charcoal black Led Zeppelin T-shirt, darker with sweat around a neckline littered with holes that implied he really loved that goddam shirt. Sylvester furrowed his brow, put out his cigarette on the lip of a truck bed full of trash and beer bottles and stolen shit he'd been selling to good buddies who know a thing or two about loose lips getting busted, and squinted at the boy like he were pea-sized.

"What?" Sylvester said, the clipped sound one of impatience.

"I said," the freckled boy replied back, terse, "Do they call you 'Sly' around here?"

Sylvester snorted, loose-limbed and careless and ready to move on to the nearest liquor store to get a new pack of Marlboros. He turned toward his open truck door to move along. He said, "Yeah, I'm Sly."

The kid lunged, and they were on ground in a few seconds flat. 

An old man in an ivy cap walking his dog watched as the teenager started to beat the ever-loving shit out of him.

****************

You don't mess around when it comes to concussions. Concussions are traumatic brain injuries — sometimes it doesn't feel like that, because you think "oh, well, they just shook some screws loose; they just have some stars circling around their head, and they'll be fine in a few hours". But real life ain't cartoons. 

If there's one thing you could give their old man credit for, it was that he never undervalued a trip to the ER when it came to the safekeeping of his son's brains. Dean had a concussion before, himself. Just before he turned fifteen; got thrown into a wall by a ghost before returning back to their hotel room and vomiting his guts out in a toilet not even worth pissing in. Sam had been about eleven, casting the kindest and most worried shadow over the hunch of Dean's back, rubbing his shoulders and nervously parroting Dad about how he absolutely shouldn't go to sleep, no matter how much he slurred he wanted to.

Dad looked up the nearest ER and drove him down. 

The nurses had to stand there with their mouths in a thin, concerned line while Dean rambled on and on about how he'd caught a Chupacabra in a giant net once in Texas and ganked a water wraith last week in Pasadena. And, of course, Dean also asked where Sam was — over and over and over and over — until Sam had to lean forward in his waiting room chair and wave at him, a constant reminder that he hasn't been left behind anywhere. Sam had tired lines around his mouth, then, and worry in his eyes that had been overcast with exhaustion. That's one of the few things Dean could remember about that night. Just thinking, 'Man, Sammy, why you look so tired?'

If he hadn't been so fucking concussed, the answer'd be obvious.

****************

Stuck in some half-dead town in Nevada in the summer of '95, Dean was more than a little restless; Dad had left them to go take out a wendigo a few small towns south, and apparently Dean hadn't been "big britches" enough to handle a hunt of that scope yet. Which was total horseshit, because he was sixteen; he could outdrink any old chump at the bar and he'd gotten a kill list so long that it rivaled a suburban mom's grocery list. 

They settled into an apartment with no furniture save for a two-seated couch and some mattresses — and exactly two months worth of rent covered with no plans to renew — but at least it also had a television with a few channels, too. Sweating from the heat, he traded the urge to hunt with the privilege of kicking up his feet and watching The People's Court. School had ended an hour or so before, but Sammy'd stayed behind for some extracurricular club he'd been practically vibrating to join, and Dean had no plans to shoot it down while Dad wasn't around to comment on it.

There was a small struggle at the front door to unlock it, and Dean listened with a quirked eyebrow.

"You forget how human hands work, Stuart Little?"

The door creaked open a fraction in response, and then stayed that way for a moment. Through the sliver of open air, Dean heard a small sob that made his stomach fall through the couch, and as he swung himself up onto his feet Sam walked through the door and nearly right into him — it was easy to see why, because his right eye was completely swollen shut, purpled and shiny. Dry blood clung under his nose and matted one side of his head, and he swayed on his feet when Dean's hands jolted out to grab his shoulders. The kid's backpack was nowhere to be seen. Probably dropped and abandoned.

"Sam. Sammy." His hand reached to touch, and he found the bloody, clumped hair hid a lump the size of a golf ball, split and oozing. The kid shuddered with pain, and tears continued to leak down one side of his face. The fear mutates and splits off, leaving a new, fresh wave of emotion: fury. This isn't a monster. These aren't claw marks or some bruise caused by a furious ghost. Some punk-ass kids must have jumped him at the school and left him like this. And his brother walked all the way back here like that. He would even bet they aren't Sam's age. Sam wouldn't have let them do this without a hell of a fight.

He could barely stop the snarl of his lips, the cold calmness. "... Sam, who did this?"

"I don't..." Sam licked his lips, looking around like he wasn't sure where he was. Garbled words took time to form with a tied tongue. Dean could bet if he peeled the other eye open, the pupils would be mismatched in size. "I don't remember. I'm... I don't know. Dean."

The fury had to wait. He moved to walk Sam to the couch, planted him there and squeezed his brother's shoulder; another cold wave of outrage washed over him when Sam winced in pain, like something was hurt there, too. "It's okay. It's okay, little brother, just don't move. I'm going to clean you up, and we're gonna — get you to the urgent care. You hear me? It'll only take a minute."

He got the first aid from the bare kitchen cabinet, dug around for all the things he'd been familiar grabbing any time Dad had gotten his bell rang. He fumbled with the supplies with all the grace Sam had opening the front door. Uttered a sorry before he carefully pressed the gel icepack to Sam's eye. The other eye locked onto him, red and wet, glazed with delirium.

"Dean," Sam wept, and Dean had to focus hard to make out what he was saying: "Dean, I think I'm dead... I tried to find help, but nobody — nobody stopped... I think they can't see me. I think I'm a ghost."

Jesus. Yeah, the kid was concussed. Bad.

"No way. Not my little brother. Never gonna let that happen." His smile was strained as he grabbed Sam's wrist and raised the hand to the boy's own face. "Ghosts aren't big on crying, right? The salt would burn like a bitch."

"Dean..." 

"Yeah?"

"My ears're weird... Sounds weird," he admitted weakly, like he'd done something wrong. 

"It's okay, dude. You're concussed."

"... Oh." Sam sat for a moment. Looked around the small, unlived space. The People's Court was moving into a commercial. "Dean... Don' tell Dad. Don't tellem I messed up."

Dean pressed a palm to Sam's chest, his thumb gently rubbing the hill of his collarbone to soothe him. Usually about now they'd be wrestling over some stupid fight, or he'd be getting him into a headlock to test his reflexes, or Sam'd be throwing pencils at him for interrupting his train of thought at the kitchen table.

"You didn't mess anything up. I promise." It was a Herculean effort to keep his hands soft and caring, because all they wanted to do now was rip someone to pieces. He was gonna. As soon as Sam was good, he was gonna split his knuckles knocking someone's teeth out. He was gonna paint the dirt with it. Gonna blacken both eyes and bleed both nostrils and break a few things in someone's body.

... But only after making sure Sammy'd be alright.

Sam was missing a backpack and about forty bucks in money he'd earned from mowing lawns for the balding, dorky librarian living across the street. That same librarian ushered the boys into the back seat of her Sedan and made a beeline for the nearest ER. With Sam leaning against him, his knobby elbow jutting into his ribs, Dean answered a question nervously asked from the driver's seat.

"I don't know who did it. But I'm real good at hunting down whatever I got to."

****************

There was a gratifying sound of Sylvester's skull hitting the side of his own truck after Dean threw him into it headlong. Storming forward, he doesn't hesitate to pick Sly back up by his flannel jacket to do it all over again. "Taking from the grown-ups not good enough for you?! You think you can fucking steal from kids, huh?! Think you can beat up some kid a third your size, huh?! You fuck—"

Wheezing, Sylvester tried to drag himself up into the driver's seat of his truck, a feeble effort to escape his punishments. A small crowd from a barbershop across the street formed, but kept their distance — older ladies mostly who knew better than to put their hands between a dog fight. Dean ignored them to grab Sylvester by the front of his collar and hoist him a foot up from the seat he'd slumped on. Their faces were inches apart, so that he could look into hazel eyes seeing red. "If I ever see you again, I'mma kill you. Do you understand? Do I make myself clear? I'll sleep like a baby after."

Sylvester didn't reply, but he did moan in pain, and Dean considered that an answer. He dropped him and stepped over his heaving chest with dust-stained boots to retrieve a backpack out of the truck bed. Then he reached into the man's jean pocket with swelling knuckles, digging more than forty dollars out of the billfold he finds there and shoving the wad into his own pocket. Then he chucked the rest of the wallet across the unleased dirt field. 

"Go fuck yourself," Dean said finally, and left just as he'd come.

****************

Dean and Sam could barely fit on the apartment's couch together, legs crammed together under a quilted blanket while the television had cast an ever-changing glow over them. Sam's face was still a mess of Dean's least favorite colors, but now he could see both of his eyes, and that helped loosen the knot in his stomach. John had been called from the ER, told the story from front to back, and he filled the teenager with grim vindication when he complimented Dean's recent successful hunt. 

The verdict: a 24-hour observation in the hospital, during which John Winchester strode in to keep vigilant watch over Dean as he kept vigilant watch over Sam; he hadn't stopped watching him since they'd gotten home after, either. Dean could hear his father's snores through the door into the one bedroom. Who knows when the last time Dad slept had been; he'd come straight back from the end of his hunt, no pitstops. 

"... Dean?" Sam asked after him, wearily. If he had a nickel for every time the boy said it today, he'd be a millionaire. But there was an awareness in Sam's eyes this time that had been frighteningly missing earlier, as he stared at him from across the short couch. In the ER, it had taken a lot of coaxing and promising that Sam wasn't as dead as he'd thought he was, and now Dean was very confident he finally believed it a day late and a dollar short.

"Yeah?" 

"Your hands."

He glanced down at the bruised, scraped up knuckles, and just shook his head at the sight of Sam's apprehension; he hadn't told Sam exactly what happened, but his brother was smart. Smarter than most people who came and went in their lives. Smarter than Dean had ever felt he could be. He sighed as he flexed his hands. "Don't worry. I'm not going to jail for murder or anything. Just... rest, okay?"

Sam's chin sunk into the blanket. Not appeased, but relenting. 

The battered kid mumbled, "You're the one who looks tired," then he smiled in that way that made Dean regret his bleeding heart. Dean's mouth opened for a moment, then closed. He played it off as best he could, but the rough emotion in the way he glanced aside and rubbed a hand down his mouth was hardly subliminal. "Yeah, well. Sometimes worrying too much is exhausting, dude."

Sam bit his lip. "I'll try not to worry you as much, then."

Dean reached out, patted the bony knee near his.

"... I might have to hold you to that."

But really? He would never.


End file.
